SOURCE: "Graham Greene: The Catholic Novels," in The New Criterion, Vol. 8, No. 2, October, 1989, pp. 24-32.

In the following essay, Bawer examines Greene's Catholic conversion, his personal faith, and the significance of Catholicism in The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, and A Burnt-Out Case.

In his long and celebrated literary career—which I began to examine in the last issue of The New Criterion—Graham Greene has written some three dozen novels, "entertainments," plays, essays, memoirs, short story collections, and travel books. But it is those books which, for want of a better term, we may call his Catholic novels (The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair, and A Burnt-Out Case) and his later political novels (The Quiet American, The Comedians, The Honorary Consul, and The Human Factor) that are generally acknowledged...